Former Sassa DG: Grants Crisis Was Self-Created

In an affidavit to the Constitutional Court, Zane Dangor has blamed Bathabile Dlamini for the crisis.

Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini during an interview regarding the Sassa crisis and the Constitutional Court outcome on March 18, 2017 in Pretoria, South Africa. During the interview Dlamini said she was shocked to hear that the Constitutional Court could hold her personally liable for legal costs related to the social grants crisis.

Former director-general of the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), Zane Dangor, says the crisis surrounding the payment of social grants was "self-created". Dangor resigned from his position in March, while uncertainty still swirled around whether or not social grant recipients would receive their grants.

Now, in an affidavit to the Constitutional Court, Dangor says that Sassa's crisis appeared to be self-created so that the grants contract could be awarded to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), according to Business Day.

He reportedly confirmed what Sassa chief executive Thokozani Magwaza's allegation, that workstreams were set up by social development minister Bathabile Dlamini, in a parallel work structure to Sassa.

These workstreams reported directly to Dlamini.

Dangor said that he and colleagues began looking at ways to exclude CPS or only use it for a short period of time. According to the report, their reasons included "moral and political hazards" of continuing to work with CPS.

Dangor reportedly told the Court that recommendations excluding CPS were rejected by the workstreams, "and the technical team finally resolved to propose that a 12-month extension based with CPS was perhaps the least risky emergency option," he said.

Dangor reportedly also said that it was the minister who prevented Sassa from presenting its plan to the Court in February. He said this was evidence that Magwaza could not be blamed for the furore, as suggested by Dlamini.